Novax Guitars

Novax Guitars is a guitar manufacturing company founded by Ralph Novak located in San Leandro, California. His instruments feature
frets which are not perpendicular to the instrument's neck (as is standard), but rather fan out at various angles to allow for more
comfortable, ergonomic playing and for proper intonation.

From the company's website:
How does the Fanned-Fret system work? By combining scale lengths customized for string tension and harmonic response, instruments with greater “fidelity” are possible. Our technical page has in-depth information about scale length if you’re interested further, but a simplified explanation would be “Imagine six one-string guitars each with a scale length optimized for the pitch and tone of that string. If a chord was formed by striking all of the one string guitars at once, how might that sound compared to one six-string guitar?”

The Novax Proprietary Individual Bridge system contributes to the unique tone of Novax instruments by acoustically isolating each string. Here’s how: the continuous metal “base plate” that characterizes most modern guitar bridges allows the saddles to “crosstalk” between strings which makes the tone “muddy”. Strings lose their individual harmonic character, or “voice” in a chord. Our individual bridge system overcomes this by separating each saddle and “base plate”, taking advantage of the natural acoustical damping properties of wood vs. metal. The signature overtone series of each string in a chord remains intact, making the chord sound more “in-tune” and keeping the harmonic interest of the different “voices”.

Combining the harmonic complexity of the Fanned-Fret system with the Novax Proprietary Individual Bridge system is synergistic; the result is breathtaking and musically inspiring.

Novax research and design philosophy is all about enhanced musical performance. While aesthetics and “gimmicks” can sell guitars to the mass market, discerning musicians recognize the benefits of an instrument that goes beyond “quality materials and construction” as a standard and embraces advanced design concepts. Vintage designs are classic, but have limitations; our “enhanced performance” design concepts elevate the musical experience, removing some of the limitations and allowing greater freedom of musical expression.